Beyond Babylon

by Igiaba Scego

  “Zuhra, I should’ve hugged you more. The jinn in the glass got the better of me.” Maryam Laamane had a theory on alcoholic pathology. “It’s the jinn’s fault, my dear, when I was like that, when I wasn’t the mama I wanted to be.” Jinn: little demons contained in a cherry-flavored drink. They cheated her.

  Maryam wasn’t surprised to see Norma Jeane in Termini. “It was predictable seeing her stuck there,” she said into the recorder. Norma popped up in her life at unexpected moments, as she had the first time, on July 1, 1960.

  They’d risen at dawn. There were things to get ready for the party. They had to make something to eat for everyone, for those who’d fought in the past and those who would soon pour out of their homes, including their own. That’s the way things were in 1960, in Mogadishu. Houses were wide open. Intimacy was an alien notion. Neighbors were members of the same big community, the same umma. Everyone was family. They gave of themselves merrily, especially that day, in a constant give and take. They filled their mouths with halwa, hot dumplings, fragrant injera, spiced rice, stew. Everything was gulped down with shai and ginger coffee. There were also colorful drinks being passed around, and the children argued briefly over sugared bur.

  Everywhere she went, Maryam gorged. She ate five times that day. She was so thin that everything slid off her without consequence. It was late, after the afternoon prayer, when her aunt called to her. “Take these sweets to Hajiedda Saida.”

  The girl didn’t like this very much. “Send Leila, please. I went yesterday and…”

  Her aunt wouldn’t hear it. “Maryam, don’t act like you normally do. I don’t want to punish you today. It’s a celebration, Somalia’s celebration. Don’t make me. Obey and come back quickly.” Having said that, her aunt put the bundle of sweets in her lap.

  Maryam was terrified. Until that moment, everything had been perfect. The sweets, the laughter with her friends, the air of festivity and happiness. Then this assignment, the last thing she wanted to be doing. The previous night seemed like a hundred years ago. Maryam wanted to create some mental distance. She hadn’t understood anything of what happened between Hajiedda Saida and her daughter, but she guessed it had to have been serious. The woman scared her to death. She shivered when she thought of the dead chicken eye.

  If she didn’t go, she would be punished, and she didn’t want that. For the rest of her life, she’d regret missing the celebration, which was for the entire country. Maryam couldn’t say why, but her absence would be an unforgivable crime. She wasn’t sure that in the future there’d be anything like it in the Horn, which Allah had given to Africa.

  She entered Hajiedda Saida’s house. The big woman wasn’t there. The wicker mat on which that enormous mass sat the night before was folded so that jinn and demons wouldn’t dirty the prayer fabric with their vile feet. The house seemed abandoned. It was ghostly.

  “Hodi! Hodi!” the girl said. “Is anyone there?”

  She repeated hodi, hodi for a bit. Then, tired of a wait that was straining her young nerves, she decided to leave. That was when Howa Rosario appeared.

  “Everyone went to feast on sweets. I’m the only one here,” Howa said.

  “Oh, yeah. Hi.”

  Howa Rosario smiled. The quivering little girl in front of her made her laugh.

  “We agreed to meet at the celebration, remember? I can see from the junk you’re wearing that you decided not to wait for me.”

  Maryam was embarrassed. It was true, she’d promised the pretty girl with the crooked nose that she’d wait for her, that she’d make the rounds of the houses with her and taste that heavenly bounty together with her. Maryam wasn’t good with promises when food was in the equation.

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I tasted a few things…but now I’ll go with you. I brought you this.” She handed over the bundle her aunt had prepared.

  “No, Maryam, don’t worry. We’ll still walk around and maybe we can go to the cinema. I’ll ask your auntie for permission.”

  The news made greedy Maryam’s slender body jump. Infantile enthusiasm.

  “First I have to pray the Maghrib. Skipping the sunset prayer isn’t good. That’s when the angels change places.”

  “They change places?”

  “Yes, dear. The angels never stay still.”

  Maryam thought about the angels. It seemed like a beautiful thing that they never stayed still. Neither did she.

  “Howa, would you teach me how to pray?” the girl asked timidly.

  Howa Rosario smiled. “Of course. Do you know how to say the fatiha?”

  “Yes,” Maryam Laamane said proudly.

  “Okay, my friend, then you know how to pray.”

  The film she saw with Howa Rosario that day was Some Like It Hot.

  She laughed a lot with Howa that night. Howa had straight, bright white teeth like those in drawings. Before Marilyn, before that strange story of cross-dressing men, the two girls were nearly beaten up and left in tears.

  They’d said the evening prayer, then the dua’a rite—a thought for those who were no longer there and another for those who were alive but doing badly. Twelve times they recited the ikhlas, the sincerity sura, then the fatiha, the opening sura, another twelve times. Their hands bowled over their faces to filter impurities of thought. They were ready. They made tribute to Allah, the Tenderly Merciful, the Clement—praises and thanks. They’d done the duty of good faithfuls. After prayer, it was time to go out together. The two girls, Howa with her braid and Maryam with her mirth, were ready to conquer Mogadishu.

  The city wouldn’t sleep that night. There were parties everywhere. Fireworks cut through the equatorial sky and animals joyfully yipped in cryptic verses. Maryam would give her life (or at least half of it) to have King Solomon’s ability to understand the beasts of the earth. She would’ve liked more than anything to know how to decipher birdsong. But she was a little girl, not King Solomon. A little girl happy to have a special friend, one with such a luminous braid. There were films in Mogadishu that night, as well as theatrical comedies, traditional dances, patriotic songs. The country’s elite gathered at the National Theater for a show called Tradition and Folklore, which retraced the homeland’s history through dance. The elite were dressed in the finest Somali fabrics. Tailors had been working for weeks to create a surfeit of colors. The two of them were merely a small child and a young girl. One dressed in red and the other in blue, their best clothes. They were happy.

  “Let’s go to Cinema Shebelle. I heard they’re showing a good film with chase scenes.”

  That sounded good to Maryam. She’d never gone to the cinema. She responded to her friend’s proposal with an enthusiastic yes.

  “First, dear, let’s go tell your auntie you’re staying with me tonight.”

  Her aunt gave the green light. She knew Howa. Besides, her hair was spellbinding.

  “The girl will drive you crazy,” her aunt told Howa. “You have my permission to smack her!”

  Maryam Laamane cowered.

  “There’s no need, ma’am,” Howa Rosario replied. “Maryam is sweet.”

  Maryam’s eyes filled with tears. Her gratitude for Allah al-Kareem, the Generous One, had enabled her to meet this most special friend.

  In the middle of their journey, the two ran into Fauzia Ahmed and her five-girl posse.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Fauzia snapped.

  Howa Rosario responded unfazed. “To the cinema.”

  “Hear that, sisters? This one thinks she can go to the cinema,” Fauzia said, enraged, and then spat in her face.

  Howa took a kerchief that she had in her skirt, cleaned herself well, then grabbed hold of Maryam and started to leave.

  “Darling, where do you think you’re going now?” Fauzia asked, getting more worked up.

  “To the cinema,” Howa Rosario said again.

  “You’re a coward like your father. I spat in your face, if you didn’t realize. You have to do something,” Fauzia said.

 
“Yeah, you gotta do something,” the five henchwomen echoed.

  “Exactly, I’m going to the cinema,” and with this Howa Rosario hoped to end the matter.

  Maryam Laamane couldn’t tolerate that impossible woman’s pronged tongue insulting her special friend.

  “Shut up, fool,” she said. The words came out with unusual ease.

  “You brought a little pest with you, I see?” Fauzia said.

  “I’m not a pest. I am Maryam Laamane Abdi. You don’t have permission to insult my friend Howa, got it?”

  Howa squeezed Maryam’s hand. She hoped to keep her quiet. In vain. Maryam kept talking.

  “Did you catch that, friends?” Fauzia Ahmed said. “Another traitor.” She faced Maryam. “You’re not allowed to celebrate. This party is for those of us who’ve earned it. You’re a traitor, like your friend with the bulbous nose. Your father and his father were soldiers for the Italians. They killed, they were prideful, and they got rich off the labor of honest Somalis.”

  “Hush, you idiot.” This time it was Howa speaking. “Leave the girl alone.”

  “You don’t tell me to shut up. You’re a lowly bitch.”

  Silence. The night’s pleasant air became suddenly tense and chilly, the trees threatening, and the animals nervous. Fauzia’s five companions held their breath and Maryam Laamane panicked.

  Howa had steely nerves. She didn’t want to get into it with this fool on a festive night, but she knew she had no other choice.

  Fauzia laid it on. “Look at her, a cheap little slut…”

  Fauzia’s smile was a malicious sneer, her voice three octaves higher. A group started forming around the contenders. Years later, when Muhammad Ali went to Africa to fight the rematch of all rematches, Maryam would remember Fauzia and Howa Rosario and that senseless combat.

  Fauzia railed with insults. She flung mud. She didn’t know why. She smiled, too, wanting the crowd to cheer her on. She wanted to ingratiate herself with the jury. She repeated the word “slut” a million times. After the millionth, Howa Rosario couldn’t hold back anymore and slapped her vehemently. It sounded like a bomb.

  “Your mother should’ve beaten you more, fool.”

  Onlookers waited restlessly for Fauzia Ahmed’s reaction. The mob grew vastly. The tussle between the girls briefly overshadowed their much coveted independence.

  No reaction from Fauzia. Only ice cold words.

  “The truth hurts, yeah? If you take it so personally, it means you really are a slut. Else you wouldn’t have reacted like that.”

  Fauzia scored a point. Howa didn’t know what to say. The fool was making her do what she didn’t want to do. She had to defend her reputation. Now she couldn’t simply ignore it and walk away. She had to show the others that it wasn’t true, that she wasn’t a slut. She was an intact, sewn-up maiden, as God hoped she would be.

  “Stupid Fauzia Ahmed, I hate you, I hate you,” Howa Rosario said to herself.

  In a case of contested reputation, tradition demanded that the accused had to challenge the one who insulted her in a test of virginity. She had to defend her honor by showing her vagina to a group of female volunteers. These impartial judges would determine the truth. Howa was tempted not to stoop to that debased compromise. She was devoted to Allah, she said her five prayers, she adhered to Ramadan. Why did she have to submit herself to a rite that had nothing to do with Islam? Doctor Jumaale had explained it to her. He was a good man. He’d told her many things. He’d explained how to cook healthily. He’d advised eating papaya when her stomach refused to do what it was supposed to do and he’d also told her that “The gudnisho isn’t something written in the Quran.” She didn’t like this. Her infibulation had made her ill. She still remembered when it happened. Four women held her down as the fifth cut the flap of skin that hung from her vagina. They didn’t just cut that, but much of the stuff around it too. She only realized this afterward. She remembered the blood on her thighs, the needle penetrating her skin. And her first pee, an indescribable pain. “Had I known you earlier, Doctor Jumaale, I wouldn’t have let myself go through such a painful thing, which God never asked of me.”

  The people around her were ferocious. They would massacre her with jeers. She’d made plans, she wanted to work, be independent, leave the fat monster that was her mother. Instead, she was lost. Everyone would find out that…

  She had to throw down the gauntlet. Fauzia Ahmed, cursed is the day you came into the world. May the wrath of Allah crash down upon you, daughter of Iblis.

  “I challenge you,” Howa said. Her voice did not break.

  Maryam Laamane, meanwhile, was trembling. She was scared for her new friend.

  “Come to my house,” one woman proposed. “You’ll be examined there.”

  Many women, volunteers from the crowd, went with the girls. They would inspect the girls’ privates.

  Howa prayed in the stillness of her mind.

  “Howa, you were offended first. And so you must undress first,” the mistress of the house said, pointing to a wicker mat beside her.

  Howa Rosario obeyed without protesting. What else could she do?

  She lay down on the wicker mat, arms crossed above her head, eyes on the ceiling. She mechanically opened her legs, keeping her knees bent and nearly touching her head. Her thighs were wide, as though in offering. Someone brought an oil lamp to see more clearly. The women approached, curious and uncomfortable. A crowd soon formed around the girl with her knees up.

  “What is this!” one of the women from the group shouted.

  “It’s white,” another said.

  “Very white,” a third echoed.

  “What could it be?” a perplexed pair asked.

  “It’s tough,” someone with a tottering scarf on her head said.

  “We want some, too,” the jurors yammered.

  Howa didn’t understand. She only felt the cold wicker mat irritating her ribs.

  She pulled herself up in astonishment, but with the dignity that had always distinguished her.

  “Excuse me, ladies, what is happening?”

  Maryam Laamane explained the mystery. None of these women had seen underwear in their lives. Howa Rosario was thankful for the distraction. She’d forgotten to remove them. She was also grateful to the seamstress Bushra, who taught her that secret. “Drafts and sand can’t slip in with these on.” That was basically true. She would go thank her the next day. Although, when she thought about it more, the idea weighed on her. There was unfinished business with Bushra.

  THE FATHER

  Before Mickaël Kra’s jewels, Marianne Fassler’s leopard skins, Alphadi’s perfumes, Pathe’O’s gaudy shirts, before all of them, great pioneers of African style, inestimable designers, dear Zuhra, I was there in Africa. Before the sub-Saharan sapeur posed as stars, before Papa Wemba wore Ferré, before Mobutu made everyone don the Maoist abacost, before this and anything else, before everything and everyone, I was there. I was one of the most famous African designers. I was sought after, my patterns worn everywhere. For me it was art, but also mundanity. I remember Mrs. Zeinab Moallim, who requested a traditional garees gown in the form of a moon because she didn’t want to feel alone after her husband married another woman. And Shukri, who asked for different colors as he got older, or Mr. Omar Tenenti, who was going on a business trip in Mauritania.

  It’s strange, dear. I never thought of making money. It was enough for me to make people beautiful and be paid the proper amount. Who was thinking of a boutique in front of the Ritz? In my eyes, the Ritz, Paris, the Champs-Élysées were science fiction. Rome, where you live now, the Rome that colonized and forgot us—that was also science fiction. The only reality that could contain me was Africa. I was among the greatest, they say. Hagi Nur showed me one of my photos in a book one day, an arresting picture. I was next to Sékou Touré. I’d made him a nice mise. Kwame Nkrumah hadn’t died yet—Nixon and the English hadn’t yet played poker with his life—and Sékou Touré wanted a suit to welcome an o
ld battle companion. I made clothes for important people, the ones you see in history books. Without Bushra, I wouldn’t have been anything. She was the one who taught me, shaped me. She was more than a mother. She was the very essence of life.

  Where was I? Right, when Bushra became my new mama. The mama of little Elias Majid. Elias was a beneficent child swaddled in goodness and closed in the embrace of a thousand hands. It wasn’t only his aunts who loved him, but also the neighbors, the cats, strangers. Every song, every word and every thought was for Elias. Everyone searched inside him for something that was no longer there. The truth is that everyone was looking for Famey. The child was her emanation. They all deluded themselves into thinking that death hadn’t come for that slight, strong girl. Death hadn’t taken her away in a bath of blood and placenta. The child was the miniature of the small mother with the same big eyes, the same infantile bliss, the same perfect gentleness. By loving Elias, one made fair tribute to the sister, neighbor, mistress. Majid was respected by all. The people knew that his seed, his collaboration had been needed to make that puppy boy. They often ignored him, though. Only the mother mattered to the world. Her expelled placenta, her scattered blood, her screams from the outer edges of death. She had sacrificed herself for the child. It was fitting to consider it hers alone.

  In truth, the sacrifice had been greater. No one else could imagine it. The shout of Famey dying was the shout of Famey raped, the echo of Majid raped. It was trampled dignity. Their wounded pride, their despondent love. It was her. It was him. She who gathered the clothes soaked with blood and sperm, furiously wrung them out and threw the sand of the wildlands on top of them. And it was he who stood up and fell back down. It was she who went to him, rubbed sand on his backside, massaged him. She who whispered the words of a soft lullaby in his ear. He who stopped her hand. He who tried to massage his pride. His sex. He who pulled up his fallen trousers. He who cried. She who was not allowed to hug him.

  Majid was respected. He was a worthy husband for Famey, though perhaps too skittish for the people’s liking. Not even the jinn, they whispered, tempted him with their boorish wisecracks. He seemed immune to joy. A mask. Children feared him, but he was considered a man deserving of most people’s trust.